Brian’s Song

Arrogant. Egotistical. Brian Billick has heard it all before.

He got off on the wrong foot for Super Bowl week by chiding the media about the Ray Lewis story.

A day later, the Baltimore Raven coach was answering questions from a small contingent when a boy about 12 walked up.

“I’m Josh from Nickelodeon,” he said, preparing to ask which five NFL teams are named after birds.

Billick warmed and leaned close.

“Do you think I’m arrogant too?”

Then he ticked off the answer: Ravens, Eagles, Falcons, Seahawks and Cardinals.

Billick has been called arrogant so often he has a whole spiel about it: If confidence is arrogance, guilty as charged.

Some say he comes by it naturally, with Bill Walsh and Dennis Green as his mentors.

Even Walsh, the San Francisco 49er general manager and former coach, had to chuckle when he saw Billick’s media-criticism episode and said:

“I’ll tell you how I feel. He is so intense and so involved and so emotional about where he is and what he’s doing, in a sense he already was playing the game. He was already competing.

“When he felt uncomfortable about where things were headed, in a sense he lashed out. He was going to defend his team.

“This is probably the last time he’ll take a public position so vocally over something that he needed to soften and let run its course.

“Instead, he took it on, and I can’t say that was good judgment. . . . He was ready to take on anybody, but this was a mistaken direction.”

Such delicious irony: Billick, a communications major at Brigham Young whose first NFL job was as a public-relations assistant with the 49ers, caught in a PR disaster.

It was almost as choice as this: Billick, the offensive genius who oversaw the 1998 Minnesota Viking unit that set the NFL record for points scored in a season, has reached the Super Bowl with a defense that set the NFL record for fewest points and an offense that went five games without a touchdown.

Sweet comeuppance, some would say.

But you must grant him this: Billick faced his team’s shortcomings and made the adjustments that set this all in motion.

He switched quarterbacks from the mistake-prone Tony Banks to the well-seasoned Trent Dilfer--who also makes mistakes but better understands when not to make them.

He took the ball out of the air and put it in the hands of rookie running back Jamal Lewis, turning to tight end Shannon Sharpe or special teams and defense for the big plays the Ravens need.

For all the talk about the dimensions of his ego, Billick did an essentially modest thing: He let defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis and the players be the stars, because he understands the plate on his door says “Coach,” not “Offensive Coordinator.”

“I think when I became a head coach, there was a change then,” Billick said. “Your orchestration of the tactics of the game as a whole have to change. That’s the thing I’ve had to learn the most the last two years.”

Walsh approves.

“This is why he’s the head coach: He can adapt to personnel, take full advantage of what he has and control the liabilities--which in this case basically is the offensive unit.

“He manages it so as not to self-destruct. . . . This is the mark of an outstanding coach. There could be others who would try to make it some kind of aerial circus, showing their prowess by having a wide-open offense and trying to make history.”

Walsh has played a big role in Billick’s career, most famously helping him get his start as a public-relations assistant in 1979.

“He was totally overqualified for the job,” Walsh said. “[But] he was a young man with a determination to be part of the National Football League who would take any job to get his start.”

Billick grew up in Redlands--his mother Mildred and brother Gary still live there--starting his coaching career as an assistant at the University of Redlands in 1977.

The next year, he worked as a graduate assistant coach at BYU, where he had been an honorable mention All-American as a tight end in 1976.

“He had a very, very good college career at BYU and when he approached us, I made calls to the university and he had the highest recommendations,” Walsh said.

“We found a place for him in PR. It was really an entry-level kind of thing, but he turned it into a very effective job and a very valuable job.”

Billick sat in on coaching meetings, answered the phones.

“I ended up being everybody’s assistant,” Billick said. “I sat in on all kinds of meetings and was even involved in marketing and ticketing. Those two years have served me very well.”

Later, Billick even helped Walsh with the 1997 book, “Bill Walsh: Finding the Winning Edge,” getting a co-author’s credit along with another writer.

“I don’t think it would have been written if not for Brian,” Walsh said.

Though Billick left the 49ers after two years to become an assistant at San Diego State, the connections stuck.

He eventually joined Green at Stanford as an assistant in 1989, then followed him to the Vikings in 1992 and stayed there until he became the Ravens’ coach before last season.

“To have a mentor like Bill Walsh--it’s not just Xs and O’s,” Billick said.

“I have said many times that the West Coast system, the West Coast offense, is more about preparation: the way you conduct yourself in the off-season, preparation of mini-camps and training camp. The way you approach regular-season games. Practices, and when you pull them out of pads. The way you lay out the game plan. The way you orchestrate the entire year.

“That, to me, is the true brilliance of a Bill Walsh system that so many of us have taken, as opposed to Xs and O’s.”

The players appreciate how Billick does things.

“By the end of the season, he already had our schedule for the Super Bowl,” defensive end Michael McCrary said.

Most coaches make contingency plans. What Billick did was different: He handed out copies.

“I’m damn sure nobody’s ever given me a Super Bowl schedule before the playoffs,” McCrary said. “He tells you details. It’s almost like a business plan.”

There are other things: The Ravens haven’t practiced in full pads for a month and a half.

“Brian understands we have a lot of veterans,” defensive tackle Tony Siragusa said.

“He’ll pull back the reins and give us a break. He knows you play the game on Sunday. A lot of coaches think you play it during the week, and you get pounded.

“As soon as you get to the playoffs, those teams get beat or don’t go far. Our team’s been one of the healthiest teams in the NFL, partly because of Brian.”

Nor have the Ravens had a curfew in Tampa, except Saturday night.

“He treats you like a grown man,” tackle Jonathan Ogden said.

Whether the horde with note pads and microphones ever embraces Billick isn’t the issue.

But let it be said he is always cooperative and his versatile vocabulary ought to at least entertain.

In the course of a few days, he has used the words salient, facilitator, reprehensible, crystallize, eccentric, embarked, arbitrary, steadfast and predisposition.

And arrogant, don’t forget that one.

“If some people think I’m egotistical or arrogant, there’s not much I can do to control that,” Billick said. “As long as that doesn’t mean that I’m self-centered, self-serving. I hope I’m not those things.”

Giant Coach Jim Fassel, a good friend, doesn’t think so.

“I’ve never felt that,” he said. “The guy I deal with and am friends with, we have some pretty good back-and-forth. No egos involved, no brashness, no nothing.”

And say this for Billick, his players like him.

“I interpret it as confidence,” McCrary said. “People think I’m arrogant too. I’m not arrogant. I’m confident.”

A coach and his team, in lock-step.